In late 2007, before he built a 10-restaurant empire in Seattle neighborhoods, chef Ethan Stowell owned three very different places, and one of those – Union – was doomed. The recession turned the restaurant’s corner of First and Union into a money-losing location and made its fine-dining concept unsustainable downtown.

Stowell’s two post-Union survivors were Tavolata, a pasta place in Belltown with lower-than-Union prices, and newly opened How to Cook a Wolf on Upper Queen Anne.

Tavolata, his second restaurant, was an immense hit. Stowell remembers days when 100 to 150 people showed up by 5:30 p.m. The restaurant stayed busy past 1 a.m. and sales totaled $12,000 some nights despite the average check being only $28.

“We found we had been missing a portion of the market who had heard about us, they liked our brand, but they didn’t want to pay that that much ($60 or $70 at Union) for dinner,” Stowell said. “We found a totally different market. We thought we should take this to a neighborhood somewhere.”

That’s what they did in opening How to Cook a Wolf. Stowell had bought the place with his father, retired Pacific Northwest Ballet artistic director Kent Stowell, with the intent of making it a modest little wine bar-like place.

What happened surprised even him. How to Cook a Wolf was just as busy and actually turned a higher percentage of profit than Tavolata. Stowell and his wife/chief financial officer Angela Stowell realized it defined a model for future success – 50 seats or less and in a neighborhood with rent lower than it would be in or near downtown.

“How to Cook a Wolf kind of set the tone for us,” Ethan Stowell said. “It was so efficient because it was so small. … It’s not strictly about the dollar amount. We can make the quality of experience better, the staffing better, the food better.”

After opening Anchovies & Olives on Capitol Hill in February 2009, he closed Union in mid-2010 and replaced it with Staple & Fancy in Ballard. Starting in spring of 2012, he went on an expansion binge, adding six more restaurants – all small, all in neighborhoods, all modeled after How to Cook a Wolf's success.

He has tabled for now the idea of a tiny, high-end restaurant called Noyer behind his Red Cow restaurant in Madrona, although he still yearns for a return of the fine dining he provided at Union.

“Our next growth spurt isn’t planned,” Stowell said.

Staple & Fancy is his busiest restaurant and was where he cooked most often before taking on more of a chief operating officer role with his company. Even so, he’s reluctant to call it his flagship restaurant.